Is Green our new Rainbow movement?

Brockville Coun. Cameron Wales introduces his motion declaring a healthy environment to be a right at council's planning and operations committee meeting on Tuesday. Ronald Zajac/Brockville Recorder and Times/Postmedia NetworkRonald Zajac / Ronald Zajac/The Recorder and Times

Nearly a decade ago now, Leigh Bursey, then a rookie city councillor, saw a movement among Brockville high school students toward bringing the Pride walks to Brockville. Back then, many of us still called it “Gay Pride,” not yet fully familiar with the complexities of what we now call LGBTQ.

Bursey’s own convictions prompted him to get in front of that movement, at the municipal level, and help Pride enter the civic arena. He did so over the private discomfort of some colleagues and on pain of abuse from some constituents.

And today, Pride Week is an annual thing: The rainbow flag goes up behind city hall and there are rainbow-flag icons on many local businesses.

Bursey and the students leading the movement, Brandon Timmerman and Kaylee Villeneuve, had a lot to do with that, but the critical factor was the reality that LGBTQ rights was an issue that had emerged, inexorably, into the broader culture at the time.

I had a sense of a similar civic movement happening, this time on the issue of climate change, on Tuesday, when another rookie councillor, Cameron Wales, put forward a motion to declare the right to a healthy environment.

Members of council’s planning and operations committee unanimously backed Wales’s motion to adopt the declaration, originating with the David Suzuki Foundation’s “Blue Dot” movement. The full council is expected to put the declaration to a final vote next Tuesday.

The dynamics of the green movement are obviously different from those of the LGBTQ rights movement, but in the broadest terms I believe we are seeing the same thing: The emergence of a line of argument once dismissed as extreme into that most mainstream of spaces, the civic arena.

This is not an immediate process: The name Suzuki alone drives people on the right crazy, while the “Green New Deal” being touted by the left in the United States demonstrates how such movements often begin with overcompensation.

Nonetheless, in this country at least, there is a growing argument to the effect that, not only is climate change human caused, but some form of action is required either to reverse or mitigate it.

The carbon tax, the merits of which will be debated more fully in the coming federal election, is one manifestation of this shift, but the more relevant one here is the way this push for action on climate change is animating youth activism.

It is no coincidence that Wales, the youngest candidate in the recent municipal election, was the most vocal on the environment during last fall’s campaign.

To be sure, the motion heading to council next Tuesday is no Green New Deal.

Wales assured colleagues the declaration is about “setting policy principles” rather than committing to anything specific.

And unlike the Pride movement, this motion won’t result in an annual parade or the unfurling of green banners.

But it will nonetheless deepen the role of climate consciousness in the inner workings of city hall.

The longer text of the declaration notes the right to a healthy environment includes the right to: Breathe clean air; drink and have access to clean water; eat safe and healthy food; have access to nature; “know about pollutants and contaminants released into the local environment”; and “participate in decision-making that will affect the environment.”

It adds the city “shall apply the precautionary principle by taking measures to prevent the degradation of the environment” and protect its citizens’ health where threats exist.

City officials “will consider costs to human health and the environment” when evaluating “reasonably foreseeable costs” of actions, the declaration adds.

And it commits city officials to report back on these matters by Nov. 26, and review the city’s progress every four years.

Much of this has been happening at city hall for some time now, but this declaration will help keep it front-of-mind.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here to mention what might soon become Brockville’s even bigger contribution to the Green movement.

Peter Bevan-Baker, the former King Street dentist who long ago chose to hang his shingle in Prince Edward Island, has since become that small province’s provincial Green Party leader.

And as of this writing, some polls were giving him a decent shot at becoming Canada’s first Green premier – and head of North America’s first Green government – when Islanders head to the provincial polls on April 23.

It may only be a matter of time before we host a Green Summit at the Aquatarium.

City hall reporter Ronald Zajac can be reached at Rzajac@postmedia.com.